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AIXpert Blog

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AIXpert Blog is about the AIX operating system from IBM running on POWER based machines called Power Systems and software related to it like PowerVM for virtualisation, PowerVC for Deploying VM's and PowerSC for security plus performance monitoring and nmon

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AIX or VIOS Start-up Memory Problems I have been working with a couple of customers that have a newly setup AIX Logical Partition (LPAR) that fails to start due to not having enough memory. The common factor is that the LPAR for AIX (or VIOS) includes a good number of what I call "high speed" adapters like 10 Gbps Ethernet, or 4 Gbps or 8 Gbps Fibre Channel adapters. They tend to have multiple adapters of each type for redundancy and throughput. For example, trying to start the LPAR with 1 or 2 GB of memory but it turned out they need... [More]

If you are migrating work from an older POWER5 or POWER6 machine/LPAR to POWER7 ... don't forget to check that those Java versions are compatible with POWER7 or you may hit "unexpected Java errors" The approved Java SDK on POWER7 are limited to particular versions with specific fixes . They can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/power7/index.html Harder to check are the Java versions which are embedded in applications. Here are two important ones for IBM software: There is a technical bulletin regarding... [More]

Following on from my previous AIXpert blog on 1st July 2013 - "Core files filling important filesystems? Want email alerts about each core dump?" it was pointed out to me by AIX guru Mathew Accapadi that we can for many years use the ODM and AIX error reporting framework to send emails on the generation of core files. See the previous blog on how to force the core files to a particular directory - and not allow them to fill up important system directories. On the alternative reporting method see below: Check out the... [More]

I am getting asked more about security these days than in the previous decade - perhaps there is renewed focus on this area as we hear about hacker groups taking what they want from organisations and companies in the News every day. Below is an answer I gave to a recent email question on what AIX offers on the security side, spotting vital files being changed and what parts of PowerSC to use for quick wins. For AIX security the three big hitters for "out of the box" AIX hardening are: Ditch telnet/ftp in the entire computer room... [More]

Shared Storage Pools - just got even more interesting ! SSP Clusters with disks pools and super fast disk allocation VIOS Shared Storage Pools (phase 3) allows 16 VIOS on different machines to operate as a VIOS cluster with a set of SAN LUNs in the pool - think in terms of a number of TBs of disk space in the pool. The VIOS systems administrator can then allocate disk space to a new or existing Virtual Machine (LPAR) in around a second which can be thin or thick provisioning regardless of the underlying disks. This drastically reduces the... [More]

Our Advanced Technology Support, Europe team have had a few months secretly testing the Power 750/760 internally to IBM as part of the normal Early Ship Program which lets a few machine out of the development labs to be tested by others to gain feedback on the product, documentation, features and usability. I thought others would like to see a few pictures of the team and the equipment involved. Please note: This is an Early Ship Machine, so there are a few details like stickers and handle colours that may differ slightly from the final product... [More]

Hot news this morning is IBM announcing the updating of the Lower End Power 710/730 and Power 720/740 models to include Power7+ processor with 2.5 larger L3 cache, Active Memory Expansion accelerator, and GHz boost Double the memory size This gives a large performance boost and drastically higher "bangs per buck" as the Americans say or "Value for money" as we Brits say. Almost everything else is the same so if you know the older models it is easy to understand Announcement letters for the new Power7+ models: Power 710 ,... [More]

Time to correct a few assumptions and statements that I made a while back. Previously I said the POWER Hypervisor decides where to put a Virtual Machine (VM/LPAR) based on the Virtual Processor number (spreading factor). Well, apart from it nearly being right ... I was actually wrong! I got talking to one of these very impressive Hypervisor developers in Germany and he put me right. In most of my larger machines, I do what I think is fairly normal for creating an VM - like working with a CPU core to RAM ratio that my customers use, like 1... [More]

A large UK customer is running a series of tests on AIX and POWER7 machines and wanted to display the results on a webserver using rrdtool and needed help getting a working example running. So I stepped up to the challenge one night rather than it becoming a search for rrdtool skills inside IBM - when I could sort something out in a few hours. No one in IBM would claim to be a rrdtool expert until they knew the details of what was required. Many people know it well enough to get what they want done but would not put rrdtool guru on their CV. ... [More]

I am currently updating my AIX systems and AIX 7 TL2 with its first service pack is now available for download from ESS or IBM Entitlem Software Support to spell it out in full (http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess) for install media and FixCentral for updates (http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/). While downloading the install media files I noticed there is a new Firefox for AIX available Firefox V3.6.25. This is a jump up from the previous one and I have had (in the past) a few annoying problems with Firefox on AIX Some weird issue... [More]

At a recent POWER & AIX Workshop, I was challenged when I stated that you can download IBM Systems Director (ISD) and run it at no costs. Granted: If you want IBM Support for ISD functions then you do need to purchase the license and SWMA for every endpoint (think HMC and every core of any machine that ISD is controlling). Compared to other systems management tools (I have worked with in the past) the ISD prices are very low so its worth asking for the local currency price. I also think most people (including myself) will get stuck on... [More]

This is part 2 of Systems Director licensing or at least working out what you are doing with System Director that requires a license. In part 1, we looked at listing (via the command line) the POWER machines that Systems Director was connected too. This time we what to find out the machines that Active Energy Manager (AEM) is controlling. Once you have installed AEM it is tempting to start monitoring and controlling all your Power Systems electrical use and temperatures but you should only use AEM if you have a license for AEM for each... [More]

I have long thought it is rather silly that IBM Systems Director can't give you a list the licenses that you should have! It does, after all, know what machines it is controlling and the data is in the database. Perhaps, that will come in the future. What can we do in the short term? Generally, I like to do everything from the graphical user interface (GUI) . I have not got time to learn and use both GUI and CLI. The system configuration data can be extracted using the command line interface (CLI) on the Systems Director server, so I spent... [More]

Stephen Atkins (the Guru behind the nmon Analyser) has released a new version - two days ago. This includes loads of improvements and some new features. Best of all - less problems running on newer Excel releases (it works around inconsistencies with the Microsoft API). I have always said that at least 50% of the popularity of my nmon is down to the excellent Analyser graphs. Very few people regularly see the online screen view. Thanks again Steve, for all your many hours of hard work in your personal time on the behalf of the tens of... [More]